Videos

Missed an event at the IWM? This archive holds videos of past lectures and public debates. All of them are free of charge. In recent years, the Institute has also increased its livestream activities. To stay informed, subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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What we witness today is the unraveling of the post-Cold War international order, and both Russia and Turkey play a major role in this process. But what do Moscow and Ankara want? What new order do they dream of? Is the same dream shared by both? What defines their foreign policy – the nature of their political regimes, their imperial legacies, or their national interests?Read more

It has become a commonplace that we live in a “post-truth” era. Is “post-truth” just another chapter in the long history of propaganda, or does it represent a new phenomenon?
A conversation with Ivan Krastev and Peter Pomerantsev, moderated by Angelina Kariakina.Read more

The bad news, on everybody’s lips, is that Europe – and more specifically the European Union – is in crisis, a crisis that could well prove to be the first step leading to its dissolution. With this in mind, we will try to come up with some good news, even though not unequivocally so: „crisis” is a constitutive concept of Europe! Read more

Europe is changing. Looking outwards, it has to operate increasingly as a global player; looking inwards, it needs to counter the centrifugal tendencies of some of its member states by strengthening regional cooperations. For a small country like Austria, the latter are crucial, but many neighbouring countries’ internal developments are putting a strain on their relations with Austria. Read more

Building on her longstanding and groundbreaking research on the “New Wars”, this lecture by Mary Kaldor explained that the difference between old and new wars is not empirical but conceptual. New wars have a different logic from old wars. Old wars (both inter-state wars and classic civil wars) can be analysed in Clausewitzean terms as a contest of wills. New wars are more like a social condition.Read more

In this year’s Patočka Memorial Lecture, political theorist Chantal Mouffe examines the crucial role played in politics by what she calls ‘passions’ to refer to the common affects that are at stake in the construction of collective identities.Read more

Populist revolt within countries has its complement in a populist revolt against the liberal, rules-based international order, which is driven by three revisionist powers – China, Russia, Iran – that have rich histories as civilizations, empires that once extended well beyond their current size, a powerful sense of historic entitlement and of historic grievance. Today their quest for enlarged spheres of influence in East Asia, Eurasia, and West Asia (or the Middle East), respectively, has reinforced, and in turn been reinforced by, a politics of resentment inside many countries of Europe and the U.S. The chip on the shoulder politics of the moment are perhaps best exemplified by Russia, because of the steepness of its decline. Is this a passing phase or a new normal, in Russia and beyond?Read more

Do we really know the answer? Two opposing political projects have framed that question. One equates fascism and communism as totalitarianism; the other proffers a heroic portrayal of communism as anti-fascism.Read more

Lecture I: The Gift of Geopolitics: How Worlds are Made, and Unmade

Americans and Europeans long tended to think of geopolitics as a kind of primitivism to be transcended. The “escape from geopolitics” has both a right wing and a left wing incarnation: the former rooted in a fantasy of universal democracy and benign US-led hegemony, the latter, in a world order governed by supranational institutions and pooled sovereignty. What both share is a conviction that the rivalry of states, with conflicting interests and worldviews, produces conflict, insecurity and impoverishment. How can the inevitable interstate frictions be harnessed to push the major powers security and prosperity?Read more

This Monthly Lecture explores the history of the dream to “adjust the climate” in architecture, urban planning, and art. In order to understand the deeper reasons for anthropogenic climate change, we need to rethink the ways in which we have cut ourselves off the vagaries of the weather.Read more

Michael Igantieff discusses in the Political Saon with Christian Ultsch und Ivan Vejvoda the question: How do we reconcile refugee’s rights of asylum with sovereign rights of border control and citizens’ rights to security?Read more

Who has a claim to be included in a democratic political community? Answers to this question distinguish populists from democrats. In this talk Rainer Bauböck propose that the question needs to be broken up into three: Whose interests should be represented in democratic decisions? Whose rights ought to be protected by democratic governments? Who has a claim to citizenship and voting rights?Read more

By using ethnographic insights and philosophical arguments Wolfgang Knöbl clarifies the rather confusing debate on violence and to sketch a plausible strategy in order to come to terms with violent phenomena.Read more

Three years after the Maidan, what is the future of the Russian language, culture and identity in Ukraine? Does it make sense to approach the conflict in the country’s east along ethnic lines? Does de-communization mean de-Russification? Are Russian speakers especially vulnerable to Russian propaganda? These questions are discussed by Andrej Kurkow, Andrii Portnov and Anton Shekhovtsov. Read more

The lecture discussed relations between various Russian actors (activists, politicians, organisations, media, officials, etc.) and the Western far right. It provided a historical perspective, discussing the pro-Soviet or pro-Russian views of particular Western far right activists, but its major focus is contemporary Russia. Read more

In order to promote greater understanding and cooperation, it is time for a new dialogue about European security. What are the opportunities and risks, not least with a new American President? And what could be the role of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) under Austria’s Chairmanship in 2017?Read more